Despite the RIAA's claims it still looks like CD sales is back to being proportional to P2P music downloads with Album sales, digital music sales and even P2P usage all on the rise. A total of 666.7 million albums were sold, up 1.6% from 656.2 in 2003, the first rise in 4 years. Overall music sales (albums + singles + download sales) accounted for 817 million or breaking the 800m barrier for the first time since back in 2000.
Despite Microsoft's myth claiming iPod users use their players mainly for carrying pirated music , they along with the iTunes service (and other music download services) helped bring digital music sales to 141 million in 2004, up from 19.2 million in 2003 or a 734% increase. However despite the number of music download sales, it showed no impact on album CD sales.
The UK also recorded an album CD sales record in 2004 with 237 million albums sold between September 2003 and September 2004, up 3% from the previous 12 month period. However unlike the RIAA's >7000 lawsuits on end users, the UK record industry has not even targeted 1% that many so far.
siliconsoul, pace306 and GristyMcFisty all used our news submit to let us know about the following news:
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The music industry was buoyed by chart-toppers from acts such as Usher, whose "Confessions" sold 7.9 million copies to rank as the year's best-selling album. The best seller of 2003, 50 Cent's "Get Rich or Die Tryin'," sold 6.5 million copies. Last year's album sales increased 1.6 percent, versus 2003's decline of 3.6 percent. Some 666.7 million albums were sold in 2004, compared to 656.2 million in 2003. Overall music sales '” which includes albums, singles and digital tracks '” increased to 817 million last year, up from 687 million in 2003. It marks the first time since 2000 that overall music purchases went over 800 million, Nielsen SoundScan reported. Read the full story here. |
With CD sales and P2P usage increase over the past year, we start to get the original Napster effect again. As the UK has filed less than 1% of the number of lawsuits in the US and experienced a larger 3% sales rise, it looks like all the RIAA's effort and time spent on tracking down users and bringing them to justice may have been a complete waste of time and legal resources not to mention over 7,000 individuals (plus their families) who suffered the consequences.
siliconsoul wrote: a 4 year decline .... yet it went up 1.6 percent last year and it went up again this year. Article has lots of good quotes and totally blows away the idea that digital music or p2p have made sales go down... The recording industry needs to learn not to fight the customers or sue them but go with the flow and learn to adapt faster and they can still be greedy b******s and rip off artists and still make tons of money.
Source: Yahoo Entertainment News
